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The purpose of this paper is to present the first systematic approach toward brand development of the country of Slovenia. The approach was of a holistic nature as relevant areas (i.e. economy, tourism, culture, science, sport) and related key stakeholders that affect and co‐create the Slovenia brand had been determined in advance and invited to participate in building Slovenia's identity.

Specifically, the paper presents the results of creating the identity of the “I feel Slovenia” brand from the viewpoint of 30 Slovenian opinion leaders. The author invited experts to express their opinions through a Delphi method, which was repeated in two iterations. The results of both iterations are presented in the paper. Their opinions represented the first step of the process in developing identity elements of the Slovenia brand.

According to opinion leaders, the key idea of brand identity should be related to Slovenian nature, which should also be reasonably incorporated in other brand identity elements.

The development of brand identity with opinion leaders represents the first, but very important step towards a systematic process in developing the country brand of Slovenia.

The brand‐building process was executed on a real example of the country of Slovenia, which has never been a strong country brand. The paper could serve as a case study for other countries in central and eastern Europe, which have not worked seriously on their country brands until now.

This chapter integrates brand identity and equity as a two-dimensional approach to destination branding. By incorporating the supply- and demand-side perspectives, the approach enables different destination stakeholders to be included in this process. Drawing on general branding and marketing literature, the study presents a three-part framework for building and implementing a destination brand. It illustrates consumer-based equity as consisting of the four dimensions: awareness, image, perceived quality, and loyalty. The chapter also offers a critical synthesis of destination image studies and recognizes the important research advancement from image to branding.

Julio Aramberri, Ph.D., is Professor of Tourism at Drexel University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Email: ja43@drexel.edu). Previously, he worked for the Spanish Tourist Office in different capacities including the CEO position (1987–1990). He has recently been appointed to be the dean of the School of Cultural Studies at Hoa Sen University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. His areas of research are marketing, consumer behavior, and the sociology of travel and tourism. He has also published in other areas such as political sociology, US life and culture, and global challenges.

Aligning corporate communications through different information sources is a great challenge for marketers, especially those operating in the tourism sector, which has been harshly affected by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. This paper provides a deep analysis of the implementation of seven basic principles of the integrated marketing communications (IMC) paradigm in a crisis situation.

In-depth interviews with tourism and hospitality service providers were conducted in the fourth quarter of 2021 in Croatia, a destination that showed remarkable results in terms of the number of international tourist arrivals during the pandemic.

Most firms successfully transitioned from tactical to strategic IMC implementation. Some problems were reported in the coordination of communication tools and channels. Whereas the use of digital technology was enhanced, database management did not receive sufficient attention. Message clarity represented the greatest challenge, while consumer-centric communication was the most neglected principle. Relationship building was pursued mainly through B2B rather than B2C communication, whereas brand equity development pursued through communication mix mostly focused on increases in awareness, perceived quality and attitudinal loyalty.

This research is qualitative in nature and provides opinions on IMC adoption from the managerial perspective only.

This paper provides guidelines for the successful integration of marketing communications (marcom) in an extremely ambiguous and uncertain environment.

The contribution of this work lies in the proposal of a new refined and expanded theoretical framework of IMC principles and numerous marcom strategies for operating during the COVID-19 pandemic, thus providing relevant implications for academia and industry.